The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows - Olivia Waite Page 0,79
meet you,” Griffin said, holding out a hand.
Harry, bless him, bypassed the hand entirely and wrapped her in a hug as warm as the one he’d given Penelope. Griffin’s eyes boggled a little as he squeezed. “It’s an absolute delight,” he boomed. “Pen’s told us so much about you. All good things, of course.”
“Surely not, Captain,” Griffin replied, a little breathlessly.
“You’re calling my sister a liar?”
“I’m calling her brother a shameless flatterer.”
Harry threw back his head and roared, his laughter bouncing off the stones of the hall. “I can see why she likes you. Now, I have to head to the kitchen—I have some excellent Highland spirits to bring to Mrs. Braintree—but don’t you go anywhere. I want to hear all about you when I get back.” He stomped happily toward the kitchen, and as usual the hall seemed suddenly smaller and emptier when he’d left.
Griffin blinked, slow to recover, as anyone was when meeting Harry for the first time.
John slipped his arm from Penelope’s and stepped forward, hand out. “Don’t mind him too much, Mrs. Griffin—the joke on board ship is that Harry has to take to sea because it’s the only place he won’t deafen everyone around him.”
Griffin clasped his hand, her expression softening. “At least you’ll never lose track of him, with a voice like that. That must be very reassuring.” The words were innocuous, but there was a knowingness to her voice, just a hint of a certain hue, that spoke volumes.
John’s gaze flickered back to Penelope, startled; Penelope smiled reassuringly. Her husband blinked twice. Then some unnamed weight shifted off his shoulders, and the smile he aimed Griffin’s way grew by inches. “Not a chance,” he agreed, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Harry clings to the ship like a burr, no matter the weather. He’d stay up there in a hurricane, if I let him.”
They moved to the sitting room: Penelope took a seat on the sofa and John sat beside her, while Griffin took up her favorite position in the overstuffed armchair by the fire. Harry burst back in carrying brandy and eggnog, a maid following behind with a tray of mince pies.
Penelope took a pie and shook her head wryly when her brother poured Griffin a frighteningly generous amount of brandy. She took only the slightest sip of her own drink when John passed her a cup: the brandy was barely detectable in all that egg and cream.
She supposed it was wise to remain sober, at least until they had all gotten used to one another, but it still rankled for reasons she couldn’t quite put words around. She bit rather aggressively into her mince pie.
Griffin smiled at Harry. “So how long until you two are back pursuing the whales of the northern seas?”
Penelope choked on a mouthful of mince. Beside her, John went still and spiky as an iceberg, visibly unsure where the conversation was tending.
Harry cocked a head, his smile bright, but there was something shrewd glittering in his gaze. “At least four months. The ship needs a few repairs, and that’ll take time, and I’ve a mind to take a bit of rest, but after that . . . To be frank, Mrs. Griffin, we aren’t quite sure ourselves. Decisions must be made. The northern fisheries are getting rather thin these days. And the bounties are hardly worth it—not when the country is bringing in so much seed oil to light their lamps and clean their wool.” He looked across at John. “We’ve talked about heading to the southern grounds, to hunt for sperm instead of right whales.”
“It would be a big change,” John added.
“It would be a bigger profit.”
“And a longer journey—by years, perhaps.”
“But we’d not get icebound and have to sit idle and wait to see if we’d be crushed.”
“We’d just have to risk storms and doldrums and a much greater loss if we were wrecked.”
Penelope coughed. “I see this is already an old argument.”
John rolled his eyes, smiling fondly. “You know what he’s like when he gets set on something.”
Harry harrumphed. “I refuse to risk losing the captaining of my ship, John. You’ve seen the numbers from this last voyage—we’re butting up against the bitter edge of breaking even. Soon we won’t be able to afford to provision a ship long enough to bring back any whales at all. And where will that leave you and me?”
Penelope broke in: “Have you talked to Michael about increasing the budget from the company coffers?”